National Human Development Report: 2001 - Indira Gandhi Institute ...

116GOVERNANCE FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENTNATIONAL HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2001Deprivation andinequality is almostinvariably rooted inpoor governance.available resources and the inherent potential of the people. States that arerich in minerals are not necessarily industrially developed, and those withrich cultivable lands and assured irrigation are often lagging behind inagricultural development. There are States in the country that, in the recentpast, have seized the governance initiatives to register important gains inhuman development, while others have squandered opportunities despitetheir natural advantage and favourable initial conditions. On the whole, thecountry and its constituent States have done reasonably well, given itscolonial past and the initial conditions at the time of launching statesponsoredplanned development in the country. There are attainments in allaspects of governance that one could legitimately be proud of and yet thereare as many challenges. Even in States where development has beenrelatively better, there are instances of loose or even poor governance thathave contributed to gaps between inherent potentialities of people and theactual realisations. These are manifested, for example, in:• Poor management of economies, persisting fiscal imbalances, disparitiesin the pace and level of development across regions and across districts;• Denial of basic needs of food, water and shelter to substantial proportionof the population;• Threat to life and personal security in the face of inadequate state controlon law and order;• Marginalisation, exclusion or even persecution of people on account ofsocial, religious, castes or even gender affiliations;• Lack of sensitivity, transparency and accountability in many facets of theworking of State machinery, particularly those that have an interfacewith the public;• Lack of credibility — the gap between the intent and the actions — ofsome institutions in the society;• Perverse system of incentives/disincentives for people (particularly for acivil servant), subversion of rules, evasion of taxes and failure in gettingtimely justice;• Despite a visible movement towards decentralisation through thePanchayati Raj institutions, a significant number of voiceless poor withlittle opportunities for participating even in institutions of local selfgovernance;and• Deterioration of physical environment, particularly in urban areas.All such outcomes can easily be related to the failure of one or moreaspects of governance, political, economic or the civic. In most cases, it isequally easy to diagnose and define what could be the ideal requirement orinstitutional arrangement for addressing the specific concerns. What is,however, important is the need to undertake an analysis of changinggovernance standards as against a purely static cross-sectional study ofailments in the system. It necessitates confronting and addressing questionssuch as, why is it that governance standard may have declined in someregions, States or countries over time? Why, for instance, some States havesucceeded in turning around their institutional capacities to governeffectively while others have failed? Why has the gap between the developedand the developing world not narrowed down at an adequate pace or in somecases even widened; and why is it that only a handful of countries orStates/regions have been able to break through from a developing status to a